LETTERS Protecting Hong Kong
Sir: I cannot recall having read a more powerful or moving leading article than your editorial (10 June) on the betrayal of Hong Kong in this week's issue. Maybe I am particularly affected because I have lived for many years in Hong Kong and have taken to heart the same fear and loathing of Mainland Chinese communism as my Chinese fellow citizens here. Hong Kong is a community of refugees refugees from the tyranny, poverty and lawlessness of China; 85 per cent of the population either fled from China them- selves or are the offspring of parents who fled from China to seek protection from the British against the nastiness of their motherland. Their standard of living is at least ten times as high as the wealthiest city in China, the neighbouring city of Canton much the same as the difference between Zurich and Bangkok. The very freedoms and rights they have learnt to take for granted constitute the bourgeois liberation that would label them in China as counter- revolutionaries fit, at worst, for summary execution in the streets or, at best, condemnation by a kangaroo court to perpetual imprisonment in the concentra- tion camps of Sinkiang. Britain – and no other country – is the protector of this freedom-loving and wealth-creating refugee citizenry who have the sophistication and ability to integrate into European society in a way no other non-Western group of people I have en- countered ever could. With the ageing of the population, and the onset of chronic labour shortages in the 1990s, that max- imum of a quarter of a million or so Hong Kongers who would settle in Britain if they were freely invited and no entry restric- tions whatsoever existed, would be a long term asset, not a liability. This argument of self-interest, however, is but nothing in comparison to the knowledge British peo- ple would have that they had stood tall as the guardians of freedom for those who chose to go rather than entrust themselves to the butchers of Beijing.
Roger Hancock
42nd floor, Block K, The Manhattan, 33 Tai Tam Toad, Hong Kong
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